REMEMBERING THE LOQBrian Hawkins writes about his years performing with Janet Craxton in the London Oboe Quartet

In January 1967 I was asked by Perry Hart if I would be willing to step in at short notice to deputise in the Oromonte Trio for their indisposed viola player at a BBC Invitation Concert. The programme of works by Priaulx Rainier was to include the first performance of the String Trio of 1965, dedicated to the Oromonte, and Janet Craxton would join us for a performance of 'Quanta' for Oboe and String Trio, a work they had already played together, and the Mozart K370 Oboe Quartet. Janet and I had not met or worked together before, and I was immediately captivated by her charm and sense of humour. I remember those rehearsals well. The Rainier Trio was quite a complicated score and our work was made more difficult by the spidery manuscript. 'Quanta' on the other hand, was already well-known by the others and much more approachable. Janet's playing in this and the Mozart inspired us all. Our live transmission from the Concert Hall of Broadcasting House was fuelled with adrenaline, but the tension was eased by the familiar and comforting voice of Alvar Liddel who introduced the programme. Priaulx' insistence on rewriting the closing bars of the String
Trio during the final balance test did not deflect us, and the broadcast went very well.

About this time, Janet had received the score of an Oboe Quartet from Lennox
Berkeley, and was keen to perform it. As the Oromonte Trio was about to
dissolve, Perry and Janet decided to ask Kenneth Heath, then principal cello
of the Academy of St-Martin-in-the Fields, if he would like to join the
three of us. He agreed, and the London Oboe Quartet was born. Later, as
the LOQ, we recorded the Rainier Trio and 'Quanta' on the Argo label for
the British Council.

Beginning work on Lennox Berkeley's new piece, we now looked forward to our
first public performance. Janet booked the Wigmore Hall and, with an oboe
quartet by J.C. Bach and naturally the Mozart included in the programme, we
performed the Berkeley for the first time on 22nd May 1968. The BBC came
along and the concert was recorded before a full house for Radio 3. (Tracks
10-12 of the CD.)

Lennox Berkeley took a close interest in his new composition from the
beginning and attended some of our rehearsals. An oboe quartet frequently
aired then, as now, was the popular Phantasy Quartet by Benjamin Britten,
his close friend. This appears on Oboe Classics CC2009 played by Janet's
former pupil George Caird. The Oromonte had played it frequently with
Janet, and the parts we subsequently worked from in the LOQ contained
markings and suggestions directly from Britten's earlier supervision. To
discover an equally attractive work would be a welcome addition to the
relatively slim repertoire for this ensemble and we approached our score
with eager anticipation. We were pleased at once with what we heard, and
felt that we had another potentially popular piece to add to our repertoire.
Berkeley, unlike some composers in my experience, was happy to correct
things that did not lie well or did not seem comfortable. For example, he
re-grouped a semiquaver passage in the cello part of the second movement, to
make the passage lie more comfortably in the bow. Later, we played the
quartet in Aldeburgh at the Jubilee Hall in a recital attended by Britten.
At a reception afterwards in the Red House, he welcomed the work warmly.

Janet now applied herself to encouraging other composers to write for her
and the quartet. High on the list was Elisabeth Lutyens who in 1971 gave us
'Driving out the Death', her Op.81. This ephemeral, highly effective piece
was a wonderful vehicle for Janet's playing. Her command of wide range and
of sustained line can be admired in this recording (Track 13). Lutyens was
most insistent on detail and nuance and she was an inspiring and spirited
presence at many of our rehearsals. She once grabbed my viola and
demonstrate noisily on it saying, 'I was a once viola player, you know!'
This recording, made in the Concert Hall of Broadcasting House, was produced
by Eleanor Warren with Elisabeth Lutyens in attendance. Both women puffed
away non-stop, and cigarette smoke filled the control room. I remember the
play-backs being intense. Deriving great satisfaction from this work, we
included it in many of our programmes, playing from her immaculately written
score. A further work by Lutyens, 'O Absalom', was commissioned by Perry
Hart with funds from the Arts Council, and entered our repertoire in 1977.
The composer wrote: 'Its real origin lies in my enormous admiration of the
violinist Perry Hart. The work is meant as a homage to her.' In this work,
the oboe doubles with cor anglais. 'Madrigal' for oboe and violin, a
six-minute piece written for Janet and Perry later, was composed by Lutyens
in memory of Kenneth Heath after his sudden death.

'The Bee Oracles' for tenor, flute, oboe, strings and harpsichord was
another commission from Priaulx Rainier, premiered in a Wigmore Hall concert on 21st
March 1971 with Peter Pears as a guest performer. The programme also
contained another first performance, the Quartet for Cor Anglais and String
Trio by Jean Francaix. There had been a wonderful and very French
correspondence between Janet and Francaix as movement followed movement
through the postal systems, accompanied by wry letters apologising that the
speed of delivery was at the tempo of 'the building of the Autoroutes in
France'. We all agreed that the French were actually rather good at laying
motorways across their rolling countryside, but this did not stop Janet from
quoting the Francaix letters to delighted audiences whenever we played the
piece. This was recorded by the BBC but subsequently lost. Unfortunately
Janet was reluctant to commit her playing to commercial recordings: the cor
anglais quartet would have been an excellent basis for such a disc. Janet's
cor anglais sound was incomparably rich and all too rarely heard. She loved
playing the Mozart Adagio K580a to enhance our programmes. Janet's
unmistakable voice was pitched quite deep, rather like the cor anglais, I
suppose. The BBC once sent a cheque addressed to J. Craxton Esq, which was
opened in surprise by her brother John, the artist. The secretary in the
finance department had mistaken Janet over the telephone for a man.

We performed the Mozart Oboe Quartet many times. I had played this great
work with several oboists, but typically, Janet shed fresh light on the
score each time. Even when on tour performing it nightly, we would rehearse
it afresh, and our enthusiasm never dimmed. The final bars, especially the
final note on a diminuendo (many players produce an unintentional
crescendo!) always brought a real sense of wonder. In Sunderland on one
occasion, playing to the Music Club, the closing notes spun such a web that
the audience did not seem able to applaud. We walked off to the sound of
our own feet. Hadn't they realised we'd finished, or was it Janet's magic
spell? We were relieved that the clapping burst out when we were out of
sight.

Through Janet, other commissioned works began to flow in, from Elizabeth
Maconchy, Richard Stoker, Frances Routh, Douglas Young (commissioned by
Peter Pears) and others. It was always exciting to arrive at rehearsal to
find Janet waving some new music at us with a triumphant smile. This CD
contains some of those works, and there is still more to tell. When a
distinguished composer agrees to write a work for one's group, there is a
feeling of satisfaction and anticipation. Berkeley and Francaix, for
example in the early days, caused us great excitement. Premieres were
obviously very much in our hands as performers, and the responsibility
produced, I think, some very exciting, even dramatic performances. When
Alan Rawsthorne was approached and his Oboe Quartet scheduled to receive its
first performance at a City Music Society concert in Goldsmith's Hall in the
City of London in May 1970, we were on the edge of our seats as usual,
impatient to lay our hands on the music and get to work. A second
performance had already been scheduled the following January also for the
City Music Society, this time at a lunchtime concert in Bishopsgate
Institute. The programme note for the second concert welcomed the
opportunity for club members to hear a repeat of this 'important addition to
the Oboe Quartet repertoire'. We started to work on the piece and invited
Rawsthorne to attend an afternoon rehearsal at Perry's house in Barnes. We
were quite pleased with the rather pastoral mein of the work which had
revealed itself in earlier rehearsals, showing the composer's very
distinctive harmonic slant, but felt a disappointment too, which we did not
feel able to impart to Rawsthorne there and then. Janet, later, considered
returning the final movement for a re-working, but we thought that this
would be churlish under the circumstances: Alan Rawsthorne was very near
the end of a most distinguished career as a cherished English composer, and
this was almost his last composition. We were in the presence of a very
distinguished man, and we just enjoyed his company. John McCabe's Oboe
Quartet was dedicated to Alan Rawsthorne on the occasion of his 60th
birthday.

When Ken Heath died suddenly in 1977, Janet asked Oliver Knussen to write a
piece to commemorate the event. The Oboe Quartet (In Memoriam Kenneth
Heath) was commissioned, and once again the Wigmore Hall was booked for a
special concert to be held on 12th October 1977. The rest of the programme
was to be the Mozart C major quartet K171 (285b), actually one of his three
flute quartets which works very effectively with the oboe, the three
Madrigals for violin and viola by Martinu, the Britten Phantasy Quartet and
K370. One evening when we were at my house in Wimbledon rehearsing the few
pages we had been given, Ollie appeared with more music. But the work was
by no means complete and the concert was only a week away. There was an
animated confrontation, and we heard Janet's voice raised - a very rare
event. The programme had to be changed. At the end of our morning
rehearsal at the Wigmore, an apologetic Knussen appeared with more music:
"please play at least some of it". But there was no possibility of playing
unrehearsed, and the concert went ahead as amended. The cellist was Charles
Tunnell, who subsequently joined us as a member of the LOQ. The first
performance of the Knussen Quartet was ultimately given by Janet, Marcia
Crayford, Christopher van Kampen and myself.

In 1978 we were ten years old. It was especially sad that Ken Heath was
not with us to celebrate, but our Wigmore programme on 14th June that year
looked well tried and tested. Ken would have recognised it as a nice
distillation of all the music we had played together since that thrilling
opening-night with the Berkeley. Charles Tunnell was part of the team now,
and we played old favourites, the Mozart, the Berkeley, the Francaix, some
Lutyens, and to allow hard-blowing Janet a chance to rest her lips, we
strings played a Beethoven String Trio and a little Skalkottas. A nicely
balanced evening for the audience we thought, just like a good meal.

There were three more years to go before we lost Janet. Ollie Knussen, who
had known Janet since childhood and worked with us regularly in the London
Sinfonietta, observed in the programme for Janet's memorial concert on 24th
April 1982, that 'the most beautifully sung Mozart one could ever wish to
hear were her solos in the London Sinfonietta's performances of the Serenade
for 13 Wind Instruments'. His tribute is telling . He goes on to say:
'Janet's quiet support and understanding, despite more than ample cause for
annoyance, is something I shall never forget'. Other written tributes paid
in the beautifully presented programme for this most moving Wigmore concert,
were from Priaulx Rainier, Elisabeth Lutyens, Elizabeth Maconchy, Rudolf
Schwartz, David Atherton, Denis Matthews, Lennox Berkeley, and by her old
friend and fellow oboe player, Evelyn Barbirolli. The programme was given
by four members of the London Sinfonietta, the Trio Canaletto, the Philip
Jones Brass Ensemble, and the remaining three members of the LOQ. We played
the Mozart E flat Piano Quartet with Nina Milkina. Sir Peter Pears spoke in
tribute. Tess Miller played with us later, and Perry re-formed the Oromonte
as an ensemble playing similar repertoire to the old LOQ. Perry eventually
returned to her homeland in Australia, and died in Sydney.

Our repertoire had never been big: the scale of our concerts was intimate
and our work together assumed the qualities of a family gathering. Janet's
loyal husband Alan Richardson was never far away in the homely surroundings of the top
flat at Kidderpore Avenue, offering his shrewd, invaluable advice. Working
in an intense way with Janet over the years meant that we evolved a style of
string playing that fitted with Janet's oboe sound, and we tried to reflect
the innumerable nuances of tone of which she was capable.

My own family's enduring memories of the Craxton household are of Essie and
Harold's copious Christmas-time parties at Kidderpore Avenue, with blazing
fires in every hearth, mountains of glorious fare, and shadowy figures of
guests, a wide and fascinating range of friends and colleagues, eating,
drinking and happily chatting. It is hard to believe that Janet died in
1981. I still miss her.